[coyNE] THE TALBOT PAPERS 48 
second Lord Wharncliffe, Sir Peregrine Maitland, Sir John Colborne, 
Sir George Arthur, Lord Aylmer, Chief Justice Robinson, his brother, 
Hon. Peter Robinson, Edward Stanley, M.P., afterwards Earl of Derby 
(“the Rupert of Debate”), Richard Talbot (afterwards Lord Talbot 
of Malahide), and William Talbot, brothers of Colonel Talbot, Richard, 
afterwards Lord Airey, Julius and John Airey (Talbot’s nephews), Dr. 
Howison, Dr. Dunlop, Bishops Stewart and Strachan, Mrs. Jameson, 
Lady Emeline Stuart-Wortley and her daughter, now the Lady Victoria 
Welby, and others of note, were sheltered beneath his hospitable roof. 
On the other hand, in his occasional visits to England he met on equal 
terms the greatest of the land. His predilection for pioneer garments 
and rustic customs at Port Talbot did not preclude him from resuming 
at need the habits of refined civilization; and, whether at Government 
house, or the Speaker’s dinner, at York, or before his own ample fire- 
side, he met his fashionable and distinguished friends with the courtly 
grace of a scion of the old Talbot stock. Of military visitors he 
appears to have had a surfeit. In 1832 he concludes a letter to Peter 
Robinson with the curt announcement: ‘ Pestered with half pay offi- 
cers. Please don’t introduce any of them to me.” 
XXV.— PERSONAL PECULIARITIES. 
Mrs. Amelia Harris gives an interesting account of a visit paid 
by him to Port Ryerse before his own mill was completed: “ He had 
come with a boat load of grain to be ground at my father’s mill. The 
men slept in the boat, with an awning over it, and had a fire on shore. 
In front of the fire, Colonel Talbot was mixing bread in a pail, to be 
baked in the ashes for the men. I had never seen a man so employed, 
and it made a lasting impression upon my childish memory. My 
next recollection of him was his picking a wild goose, which my father 
had shot, for my mother to dress for dinner.” This was in accordance 
with his habits at Port Talbot. Mrs. Jameson remarks, “ For sixteen 
years he saw scarce a human being except the few boors and blacks 
employed in clearing and logging his land, he himself assumed the 
blanket-coat and axe, slept upon the bare earth, cooked three meals a 
day for twenty woodsmen, cleaned his own boots, washed his own linen, 
milked his cows, churned the butter and made and baked the bread. 
In this latter branch of household economy he became very expert, 
and still prides himself on it” He dressed in homespun even on 
journeys abroad. His sheepskin coat and fur cap, celebrated wherever 
his name was known, was a familiar sight on the streets of York when 
he paid his winter visit to the provincial capital, to present his annual 
accounts and | pay over his collections as Land Agent to the Govern- 
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